1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to online marketing, and in particular, to automation for monitoring and accounting in connection with search engine optimization (SEO) marketing activities.
2. Description of the Related Art
A search engine is a program that assists users to search for information on the Internet. When an Internet user enters a search query into an interface for a search engine, the search engine examines its index and provides a listing of matching documents. The usefulness of a search engine depends on the relevance of the result set it generates and shows to the web user. While there may be many documents that include a particular word or phrase, some documents may be more relevant, popular, or authoritative than others.
Some search engines provide search-related advertisements with regular search engine results in a search engine results page (SERP). A natural result set that should not be influenced by payment for listing is known as an organic search result and occupies a space within the total result set. A result set influenced by payment for listing is known as a sponsored search result. FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional search engine results page (SERP) which shows both organic and sponsored results.
One way to promote a web site is by purchasing advertising from advertising networks or publishers, such as on a pay per click (PPC) basis. Typically, advertising is selected based on an auction for the advertising space. While an advertising network may offer a defined price for advertising, such as an amount per click, it is more common for prices to be set through a bidding or auction arrangement.
Another way to direct traffic to a web site is via search engine optimization (SEO). A goal of SEO is to improve the visibility of a web site by making listings for the web site appear more frequently and more prominently in the free (organic) portion of a search engine results listing. Many strategies exist for performing SEO.
While SEO can be performed by operators of a web site itself, SEO services are typically performed by consultants or companies having specific SEO expertise. These SEO practitioners contract with a web site's operators to improve the ranking of links to the web site in a search engine's organic listing. For example, SEO practitioners can be compensated on a fixed fee basis, which can be supplemented with bonuses tied to specific results, such as (1) how high links to the web site are placed on the organic listing, (2) increases in Internet traffic (for example, page hits), or (3) increases in sales as a result of better (higher) Internet traffic, or to combinations of the same.